The Landing Page Autopsy
Most landing pages don’t die of one big wound. They bleed out through a dozen small ones. Here’s the post-mortem we run on every page — and what usually killed it.
Nobody’s landing page dies of one dramatic wound. It bleeds out quietly — a vague headline here, a buried CTA there, a hero image that looks great and says nothing. By the time the bounce rate shows up in a report, the visitor is long gone and so is the ad spend that bought them.
When a page underperforms, we run the same autopsy every time. Five checks, in order, because the order is the diagnosis.
1. The five-second test
Show the first fold to someone for five seconds. Then ask: what does this company do, and what are you supposed to do next? If either answer takes more than one sentence, the page failed before anything else had a chance to matter. Clever taglines are the usual suspect — clarity converts, cleverness decorates.
2. Message match
The ad promised one thing. The page opens with another. That gap is where conversions go to die — the visitor clicked for a reason, and the first headline either confirms they’re in the right place or starts the back-button countdown. Match the promise word for word if you have to. Nobody ever bounced because a page was too obviously what they wanted.
3. Proof placement
Most pages have proof — logos, numbers, testimonials — parked in a graveyard section near the footer. Proof works when it sits next to the claim it proves. A “324% uplift” belongs beside the promise of results, not three folds later where only the most committed scrollers ever meet it.
4. The CTA friction ledger
- How many fields does the form ask for, and how many does the sales team actually use?
- Does the button say what happens next, or does it say “Submit”?
- Is there ONE primary action per fold, or a buffet of equally-weighted buttons?
- Mobile: can a thumb hit it without zooming?
Every extra field, every ambiguous label, every competing button is a small tax. Individually harmless. Together, the reason your “book a call” page converts like a newsletter signup.
5. Speed (the boring one that wins)
No one screenshots a fast page. They just stay on it. Every second of load time on mobile costs conversions before your copy gets a single word in — run the page through a throttled connection and watch what your visitors actually experience. It’s usually humbling.
A landing page has one job: make the next step feel obvious. Everything on the page either helps that or bills against it.
Run the five checks in order. Fix the first failure you find, ship it, measure, repeat. Autopsies are for pages — the practice keeps yours off the table.
The five-check post-mortem from the article, as a print-ready checklist you can run on any page in ten minutes.
Builds conversion machines for brands that are done being polite about growth. Writes down what actually worked.
